Marie Therese Canin

Marie Therese Canin was born in 1910. By the time she was 26 years of age, tuberculosis had killed her parents and had attacked her spinal column (Pott’s Disease) as well as her abdomen.

For more than 10 years, her life was one continuous round of hospital admissions and operations, (bone grafts to her spine and sacro-iliac joint). There were fleeting improvements allowing minimum activity. From the beginning of 1947, her general health declined, with oedema of both lower limbs, a vaginal fistula, and very frequent collapses. In this state, verging on cachexia, weighing only 38 kg. she arrived in Lourdes on October 7, 1947.

On October 9th, she was in attendance for the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, where the Eucharist is carried in a monstrance through the assembled crowd. After the procession, she felt better, could get up, move about, and eat the evening meal.

She was examined by the Medical Bureau the next day and was considered, from her physical characteristics, as presenting a complete improvement.

Her condition remained the same after a year, without any set-back. She was examined again by the Medical Bureau in June of 1948, which found that she had regained her former weight, 55 kg. All those present at the Bureau verified that she was cured, with no medical explanation able to be given.

At the Meeting of the National Medical Committee on February 27, 1949, it was confirmed that “there was no natural or scientific explanation for this cure”.

Three years later, on June 6, 1952, the Archbishop of Marseilles declared that the cure of Marie-Therese Canin was in fact miraculous.